Jonathan Saunders / Fall 2013 RTW

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“It was time to embrace a bit of womanhood!” declared Jonathan Saundersbackstage at his collection, inspired by the highly eroticized pulp fiction images created by the pop artist Allen Jones and by “fifties British icons,” including Diana Dors, the pulchritudinous B-movie actress who was this country’s answer to Jayne Mansfield.

The Lana del Rey peek-a-boo hairdos and the teetering boudoir heels of Christian Louboutin bracketed looks that played with a comic-strip idea of femininity—bustier tops (sometimes with the bosom enhancers deliberately revealed) and pencil or poodle skirts, and overscale V-neck sweaters of the sort once worn by well-groomed teens at the soda fountain. But the attitude and simplicity of line remained resolutely modern, with day pieces mixed in an unforced way.

Saunders, who began his career as a brilliant textile artist (creating those memorable Amazonian parrot prints for McQueen’s Spring 2003 “shipwreck” collection, for instance, and, later, eye-popping geometrics with a Memphis feel for his own line), has sadly moved almost entirely away from print—one unusually conventional shimmering rose and lavender flowery chiffon, layered with a fluffy lipstick-red sweater, was the lone runway survivor this season. Instead, he has been focusing on engineering bespoke fabrics to create pattern and surface interest. He experimented with “textures that felt new to work with for me,” including synthetics like leatherette and patent, mixed with sweater girl mohairs and alpacas with “a negligee lightness” in a warm palette that looked to Louise Bourgeois’ lush works on paper.

There was a fifties glamour to an abstract spot design that was worked in cut velvet on chiffon or satin, and a scrolling eighteenth-century motif in patent that was appliquéd onto the opening full-skirted frock of khaki tweed, and later appeared cut from bonded satin as an embellishment to handmade Chantilly lace.